Huge hippo work last big commission for Norton sculptor after ski accident, brain surgeries

In the last couple years, Norton artist Virgil Villers has been reflecting on his six-decade sculpting career.

A retrospective look at his longtime passion working with clay might seem like a natural thing, considering the artist recently turned 80. But for Villers, taking stock of his career has taken on a deeper meaning after a life-altering ski accident in Aspen in February 2022, left him with a dangerous brain bleed.

Villers didn't know until about two months after the accident that he was suffering a slow brain bleed. He ended up at City Hospital in Akron, where he had to undergo not one, but two brain surgeries a week apart.

The traumatic brain injury left Villers' hands impaired and his body weakened. After six months of physical and occupation therapy, the Norton resident now walks with the aid of a walker or uses a motorized scooter.

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Going through strenuous therapy after his terrible accident, Villers wasn't focused on regaining full hand function so he could get back to sculpting. He just wanted to heal.

"I just wanted to get better, period," the artist said at his home in late March. "I wasn't even thinking of 'Oh, I gotta be sculpting again.' I didn't think of that. I couldn't even write my name. I scribbled."

Villers' hands are OK now. Enough so that he recently finished a large commission, "Corporate Ladder," that he started working on more than two years before his accident.

The huge work features three bronze hippopotami, weighing 200, 100 and 60 pounds each, climbing up an aluminum ladder.

"I had to put that sculpture on hold. It's finally done and it's beautiful," the artist said.

"Corporate Ladder," installed last month at client Keith Fisher's home in Chicago, is Villers' last big commission.

"It's such an ambitious project. It takes a lot of strength and I'm just not up to that right now," the artist said of the massive work.

That new reality comes after decades of Villers creating large works, from Norton High School stadium's ferociously huge "Prowling Panther" to the colorful "Circle of Friends," with an elephant, giraffe and hippo hand-in-hand outside Akron Children's Hospital.

Villers' road to recovery

Villers, who was skiing moguls in 2022 when he went airborne and landed on his head, was wearing a helmet at the time of his accident.

He met his wife Judy in Florida after that and didn't realize anything was wrong until they attended a wedding in Las Vegas in April.

"When we got to Las Vegas, I knew there was something wrong. He was falling into people," Judy said.

Even so, the couple went hiking in Zion Canyon before going home to Ohio.

A day after returning home to Norton, Villers went to Summa Akron City Hospital's ER. He was in surgery just hours later.

"They said it was a terrible brain bleed. It was one of the worst bleeds they'd seen," Villers said of his medical team.

After the first neurosurgery didn't stop the bleeding, he went through a second neurosurgery a week later. After the second surgery, Villers' hands felt different.

"It felt like there was a thick sheath over them," he said of his hands' decreased sensitivity.

"It was terrible," Judy said of the second surgery. "There were no deficits after the first surgery."

"The hand was compromised. But it did come back in therapy," Villers said of his fine motor skills.

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How Villers made his hippos

Before his accident, Villers had most of the clay work done for "Corporate Ladder." He was able to return to the work about nine months after his ordeal.

Getting back into the project, Villers worked on the top two hippos, creating each of them two times in clay before he was satisfied.

Villers specializes in sculpting finely detailed animals that evoke a range of emotions. Through animals, he said, he can more easily explore human emotions.

"With people, you get hung up on (facial) expressions," he said.

"Corporate Ladder" was inspired by customer Fisher's loves of hippos. Villers started its design in fall, 2019, with a number of animal sketches.

Villers made the original hippos for the sculpture out of clay, which he brought to Studio Foundry in Cleveland to make molds of the creatures from urethane rubber and plaster. The foundry next used a wax casting technique and Villers brought the waxes home to fix their imperfections.

He then sent the waxes to Lander, Wyoming, to be cast in bronze. Longtime friend Louis Bilinovich, who owns JR Wheel in Barberton, fabricated the hippos' aluminum ladder.

Villers decided to have the three hippos climbing up an open ladder, which looked more precarious than a staircase. One of his goals in creating such heavy creatures was to make them look weightless, suspended in an aerial perspective.

The hippo at the top is doing a handstand, facing the lower two hippos and ferociously celebrating with its mouth wide open.

The hippos are "metaphorical stand-ins for all people" and the work represents "the raw energy inherent in competitive encounters of modern life and the primal desires of the human condition," the artist said.

Villers' artistic interests developed early on

Villers began sculpting at age 6, when he got rid of the animals in a farm play set and created his own out of clay.

The artist, who grew up wanting to be an art teacher, taught at Norton Middle School from 1971 to 2002. His Norton High School art teacher, Zella Boedicker, was his mentor and inspiration.

He earned a bachelor of science in art education, a master of arts in sculpture and a master of fine arts in sculpture at Kent State University.

Villers created socially conscious art early on as a sculptor, including a "Starving Children" series of life-sized children he did at age 32 for his master of arts degree. Back in 1976, he positioned the sculptures of emaciated children, with skin of polyester resin stretched over clay, during the lunch hour in Akron's Cascade Plaza to gauge how passerby reacted.

Villers' goal was to raise awareness of the starving children of Biafra in Africa and to raise money to help those children through UNICEF.

The artist also created "The Aging Syndrome" series for his master's degree to confront issues of loneliness, senility and death by portraying an elderly man through the final phases of his life.

Later in his career, Villers focused on a "Fish-Face Series," which was a result of mistakenly dropping clay and flattening a human face while creating a bust at an exhibition. His Totem series features tall, Egyptian-like forms, and he's created both primal and whimsical animal series.

Villers has also sculpted children, inspired by his own young kids. He was commissioned to create "Afternoon Out," a sculpture of a mother and daughter having lunch together, for a McDonald's franchise in Painesville and later created several more pieces of children there.

One of his goals now is to create a coffee table book of his various sculpture series.

Villers goes down memory lane at home studio

For many years, Villers has worked out of a two-story studio he had built behind his Norton home. The studio, which has a garage door, is also where he keeps his red Corvette.

Inside, Villers showed an early wax model he created of his hippos and staircase for "Corporate Ladder." He also shared sketches for other works he's done.

One of Villers' favorite sculptures is his "Balancing Act," featuring a woman doing a handstand on the back of a horse in a circus act. The idea came from a dream he had after enduring an accident on horseback about 20 years ago.

In another series, animals are frolicking with each other. A hippo and elephant are dancing in "My Caribbean Soul Is Out of Control" and the same animals are on a couch drinking cocktails together in another sculpture.

Fisher saw these social animal sculptures by Villers at an art show at the Illinois Port Clinton Art Invitational near Chicago where the men first met. Soon Fisher was asking Villers to create a hippo for him.

Celebration of life, conclusion of a career

On March 11, Villers had a celebration of life for his 80th birthday, which was March 13. He enjoyed music, food and a roasting by family and friends at Wolf Creek Tavern in Norton.

"It was fabulous," the artist said.

Naturally, he and Judy brought numerous sculptures from his home to make an appearance at the party as table tops.

Among the 120 guests were son Zak Villers, of Clinton, a painter who works in the loft of his father's studio; and daughters Tessa Ivasku, of Bath, an occupational therapist and Amy Cope of Norton, a special education teacher.

Why a celebration of life? Villers said he really wanted to be there for such a thing.

"I'm not going to be around forever. I'm trying to get a conclusion on my career," he said.

Arts and restaurant writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Norton sculptor finishes last large work after suffering ski accident